"Why is she being so persistent?" Lin Chi, who hadn't joined the pursuit, asked me, puzzled.
I shook my head. "I don't know, but she must have her reasons. Let's follow them by car."
I "woke up" Zheng Bingbing, and the three of us in three cars followed the Yin Messengers' convoy. After about a kilometer, we caught up with them. The ten Yin Messengers were scattered, all over the place. I activated my Qi Sensing technique and saw that there were no bandit auras within my sight, meaning the fifty or so bandits from before had all been eliminated by Wu Zhao and her group.
Wu Zhao ran back. I asked her why she had to kill them all. Wu Zhao nonchalantly replied, "To avoid future trouble. You might not know, but their main camp has over two thousand bandits. The bearded man who came earlier was just a minor leader. If that guy had returned to the mountain stronghold with his head, it would have rallied more bandits. Moreover, they have firearms like bird guns. I was worried about casualties."
So that's how it was. That made perfect sense.
The Yin Messengers had no serious injuries, only two sustained minor scrapes while the bandits were stubbornly resisting. We got back into the cars and continued on our way.
I kept my Qi Sensing technique active. After driving about ten kilometers, I suddenly detected a large concentration of auras to my right. I found a spot with sparse trees and looked over. It was a towering mountain that reached the clouds – truly into the clouds, as its peak was obscured by cloud cover. I guessed that was the bandits' stronghold. Fortunately, it was quite far away, and the road didn't lead directly to their lair but was on a tangent about three kilometers away.
However, three auras were scattered by the roadside ahead, likely sentries the bandits had posted on their way down. I used the walkie-talkie to tell Bingbing to pull over and I would take the lead.
Approaching the first outpost, I slowed down and instructed the Yin Messenger in my car, "About fifty meters ahead, on the right side, see that tree with white scars on its bark?"
"Got it," the Yin Messenger replied, extending the barrel of his gun from the passenger seat.
"Starting from the bottom, count up to the second branch. Above that, at a person's height. That's where the bandit's feet are. This guy shouldn't be too tall, about the same height as Master Wu Zhao. Calculate it yourself, where to aim to hit his torso." This was all the information I could get from my Qi Sensing technique; I couldn't see the guy, he was hidden in the leaves.
"Understood." The Yin Messenger raised his gun, aimed, and fired.
Two seconds after the shot, a bandit fell from the tree. He was wearing a cloak made of leaves, no wonder he was so well concealed.
When the car got closer, I got out to take a look. The Yin Messenger's bullet had hit the bandit squarely in the chest, killing him instantly. These masters have incredible perception!
There was another bandit in a tree about three hundred meters ahead. The two outposts were surely within sight of each other. Because that position was higher and not by the road, he immediately chose to climb down and flee towards the mountain. I was still hesitating whether to let this sharpshooting Yin Messenger pursue when he directly found a tree branch, set up his gun, even adjusted the sights, and fired steadily. I, for one, couldn't see the bandit, but his aura indeed ceased to move in place!
"Excellent marksmanship!" I praised. "Then we don't need to drive forward anymore. To the left, about two hundred meters away, in the grass, counting from the left, about..."
Before I could finish analyzing the coordinates, that unlucky bandit actually ran out of the grass himself, intending to cross the road back to the mountain. He was promptly shot down by Brother Yin Messenger right in the middle of the road.
After dealing with the sentries, we continued on our way. We were getting further and further away from the large mountain, and no auras were pursuing us from behind. We had passed safely.
Chatting with the brother in the car, I learned that the mountain we had just passed was called Wanshou Mountain. Its leader claimed to have over twenty thousand bandits under his command, but in reality, there were over three thousand. It was by no means a small force. However, in the underworld, this scale wasn't considered significant. The largest bandit stronghold in the underworld was called "Yefu Ridge," with nine villages and eighteen stockades, housing over a hundred thousand bandits, along with over a million civilians under their control. It was practically a miniature separatist kingdom.
Normally, the court would think about suppressing bandits from time to time. But since the outbreak of war, they had no energy to do so and could only let them wreak havoc.
"We're not going through Yefu Ridge on this trip, are we?" I asked the brother.